Evidence Explained: Prevailing Attorney Outlines Successful Defense in Inmate Death Case
"Everybody feels terrible about what happened to Eddie Nelson. It simply wasn't Keyvon Sellers' fault. He did his job and he's a really good person, and if he had perceived a threat to Eddie Nelson, he would've done something about it," said Thomas Gristina of Page, Scrantom, Sprouse, Tucker & Ford, who defended a corrections officer in a wrongful-death suit.
January 24, 2025 at 01:40 PM
5 minute read
A federal jury recently found intake and health care personnel at a Georgia jail were not at fault for the death of an inmate allegedly killed by a cellmate accused of a racially motivated hate crime.
A jury for the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Georgia reached a verdict siding with the defendants—a correctional officer, a prison nurse and her employer—sued for allegedly ignoring a risk of harm to Eddie Lee Nelson Jr., a white man, who was paired with Javon Hatchett, a Black inmate, who allegedly killed Nelson in their shared cell at the Muscogee County jail in Columbus, Georgia. Hatchett, who later told police he "fantasized about killing white men," was incarcerated for allegedly assaulting a white Auto Zone store clerk solely because of his race, according to the Nelson family's amended complaint.
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